Data Centers: The Heat Is On

Suddenly, IT managers are dealing with a hot topic: Electricity and cooling costs are eating into server managers' budgets as vendors pack more processing power into smaller spaces. From switching on the AC to basing installations on newer, lower-power processor lines, smart server managers can realize serious savings by managing factors that affect electric and cooling bills.

A year ago, the costs of electricity and cooling were so neglected that they appeared in only 2 per cent of data center managers' budgets, according to Paul Miller, VP of Marketing for HP's Proliant blade servers. Today, 20 per cent of such managers find these expenses coming out of their pockets, not the general facilities management budget. Similar accountability will fall upon half of server managers by year's end, he predicts.

"Power and cooling requirements are a big issue. Some customers tell us it's their fastest-growing cost in data centers," says Miller. "One hundred per cent of my customers ask about it in my presentations, and we often spend 30 minutes on the subject."

Data centers' power consumption rose 25 per cent over the past four years, announced a panel of experts at Liebert's Incredible Universe conference in October. Moreover, electricity is becoming more scarce in certain markets. "A lot of data centers are capped out on their power availability," says Miller. "London and New York City in particular are power and air (conditioning) constrained."

So common are these constraints becoming that HP and other hardware vendors devote considerable effort to helping customers overcome them. "In every data center project, HP has teams that help customers plan for the power and cooling ceilings they face," says Miller.The issue is hardly insurmountable, however. Several areas offer opportunities to save money and avoid server meltdowns.

One is smart server-room engineering. "One-third to one-half of air conditioning costs " literally hundreds of thousands of dollars per year " can be saved by properly engineering the physical envelope of the room. We even take infrared photos of a room's air flow, then apply smart cooling technologies to cool hot spots rather than trying to lower the temperature of the entire room," Miller says

IBM, Sun, and other vendors have long offered similar programs. Dell introduced a site assessment program in January to help customers optimize their facilities for blade servers' power requirements.

Rack-level measures are another area in which managers can save 5 to 15 per cent of cooling costs. Some vendors supply cabinets designed to improve air flow and minimize "bypass," in which hot air blown out the back of a cabinet re-enters through the front. IBM's BladeCenter claims power savings of up to 66% due to its Calibrated Vector Cooling design.

Finally, chip design is catching up to the heat problem. The latest low-power processors use 20 per cent less electricity than their predecessors on average, says Miller. AMD's Opteron and Intel's Nocona employ hardware monitors that reduce power when processor utilization falls below certain thresholds. "AMD seems to have a 20 per cent power-saving advantage over Intel," he notes. "Customers are very interested in lower-power chips."Some vendors have even tried Pentium M chips in blade servers. IBM announced a new Integrated xSeries Server based on a 2.0 GHz Pentium M in October. But many customers find the electricity and heat savings don't make up for the lower processing power. HP has discontinued its Pentium M-based ProLiant BL10e G2 blade. Inevitably, more powerful processors will be crammed into smaller spaces, generating more heat and forcing server managers to adopt more expensive liquid-based cooling technologies.